Motorola RAZR3 comes back from the dead for a very special hands-on video
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted April 30th 2010 4:41PM
posted April 30th 2010 4:41PM
While you're still trying to decide whether or not we've entered the post-Moto era (maybe recent sales numbers were but a mere hiccup) might we interest you in a hands-on of Motorola's doomed RAZR3 (aka Ruby)? Featuring an improved interface, GPS, FM radio, and a touchscreen, this would have been the phone to beat -- in 2006. For a closer look at the dumphone that almost was, check out the video after the break.
Update: Of course, if you're in South Korea you can buy one of these beauts -- there it is called the KLASSIC, of all things. How did we forget to mention that? Maybe because it's South Korea. Or maybe because it's a RAZR? Yeah, probably the second one. As an Engadget reader who actually worked on the phone pointed out, the handset "is a joy to use. In the end it received a 5MP autofocus camera, which takes great pictures, and the camera application has more 'knobs' and F-stop and ISO adjustments than I know what to do with. I used it quite a bit in for shooting closeup pictures of small failed components in my day-to-day business work. It is pretty neat to be able to navigate much of the phone from the outside screen." Thanks for the tip, Dan!
Update: Of course, if you're in South Korea you can buy one of these beauts -- there it is called the KLASSIC, of all things. How did we forget to mention that? Maybe because it's South Korea. Or maybe because it's a RAZR? Yeah, probably the second one. As an Engadget reader who actually worked on the phone pointed out, the handset "is a joy to use. In the end it received a 5MP autofocus camera, which takes great pictures, and the camera application has more 'knobs' and F-stop and ISO adjustments than I know what to do with. I used it quite a bit in for shooting closeup pictures of small failed components in my day-to-day business work. It is pretty neat to be able to navigate much of the phone from the outside screen." Thanks for the tip, Dan!
reminds me of my first cellphone :)
@inspiron41 you must be young. mine was a nokia brick
@KipDrordy
the funny thing is that it still outspecs some featurephones on sale today... Gps in a featurephone? Sick!
@KipDrordy
yah i am ^_^! i had moto razr for a long time. it work great. battery life was wonderful. had the phone for a good 3-4 years before i decided to go smart phone
moto razr >> mt3g >> nexus 1
@inspiron41 ahh... the good old days of Nokia and Sony.
@genomalice The 5MP camera on the back swivels with the screen to make itself a front-facing camera. That's pretty intuitive.
@KipDrordy
Yup my first cell phone was made by Mitsubishi of all things, i remember I thought it was so awesome that I know longer had to carry a beeper
@inspiron41 Heh. My first cellphone was some kind of Ericsson block with a 2-line-dotmatrix-display. It actually didn't even have interchangeable monophonic ringtones, just som weird "bloop"-noise. Aaaaand the battery didn't last longer than about 1 hour and a half or so XD
I miss those times sometimes...^^
@KipDrordy
i preferred the nokia Slab :)
either way, it looks like a sweet little phone, in the razr range it looks like a nice upgrade, and had this been released 3/4 years ago it would have suited a portion of the market, now though... maybe not :(
@inspiron41 Don't they sell these in Korea?
@genomalice
Uhh.. almost every feature phone from AT&T and Verizon have GPS. It's not unlocked though.
@inspiron41 oldies but goodies phone -- actually, motorola tried to use razr keyboard to the devour on its concept stage (calgary) but didn't materialize. http://j.mp/calgary-devour-razr
@KipDrordy My first one was also a motorola sometime in the mid 90's. Was a little longer than the iphone, just as wide and 3 times as thick with a 3 line dot matrix display and a extendable antenna.
This video is a lie! Everyone knows touchscreens weren't invented until June '07.
@sweet greggo
Unless that was sarcasm, you probably had been living under a rock before 2007
@genomalice there are plenty of non-smartphones with gps
@genomalice Every Cdma phone has gps you must be on AT&T or Tmo..
RAZR 1, RAZR 2, and now RAZR 3?......motorola is pushing their luck they had with the first RAZR a little too far this time.
Motorola never even understood why the Razr was a success, despite its numerous design flaws: it's thinness. They followed up with a bunch of dumb variations, like one that was thicker but NARROWER. What's the point of that? None.
Then came more stupid regressions, like wavy rows of keys on the keyboard. And the continued placement of side buttons on the wrong half of the phone, the TOP half. Who holds a phone by its screen? And what did those buttons do? Turn the ringer off if they bumped against something in your pocket. Brilliant.
Not to mention the pathetic OS and syncing software. These phones had way more memory than any PDA of the '90s, yet lacked even addresses in the contact list. No street addresses, no E-mail addresses, no to-do lists, no memos, no syncing software that ever worked. And then came the excuses, "OH, you need a SMART phone to do that." WRONG. That was an excuse for piss-poor software design, period. A 32 MB phone should be able to carry and display the information that an 8 MB Palm OS PDA handled a decade earlier.
Then the foot-dragging on Android. Motorola should've dropped everything else the day Android was announced and been ready with kick-ass phones in all styles AND both GSM and CDMA before HTC ate its lunch.
@Information Central IIRC no calculator either.
@Information Central I agree. My aging 4+ year-old RAZR is still in use today. I love it because it's thin, because of its metal casing, because it can take a beating, and because of its strong reception.
Every new RAZR-wannabe, failed to follow that same formula. And they wondered why they can't recapture the sales of the original. It's simple. Gimme a metal-cased phone, just as thin/light and with a nicer screen and not-so crappy UI and you have another customer.
@Information Central
Good god, I've never heard someone tell so much truth about Motorola. They probably really did not know why the RAZR was such a success, along with the Droid.. why in the hell would you come out with the Cliq after the droid?
The KRAZR was the only one of the series I liked. And I kept it in perfect condition, until I let my dad borrow it and he cracked the front glass screen. Now I have an LG enV Touch, which sucks because of the resistive touchscreen and horrid camera.
@Information Central
I too remember the time when people asked "Is that a cell phone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me" and the answer was typically... "its my cellphone... "
Motorola hardware was awesome!... they just had an awful OS. I don't know if it was the carriers that locked down the phones, or if it was Motorola being incompetent, but lack of trivial-to-implement features is what killed Motorola moving into smart-phones.
The one like this phone are people in their 60's
60s
@Information Central The sentence reads, "The one like this phone are people in their 60's," and you highlight the apostrophe misuse? ;-)
Ha ha, yeah, the whole "sentence" sucked but the apostrophe misuse always pisses me off.
But can it play Crysis?
@Gold Mamba Shut the hell up.
@Gold Mamba
Your joke is from 2006 too.
I see what you did there...
Ty ty Ed. Quit being a comment gnatsie Evster, your retort is as lame my joke. Razr 3 is an old feature phone. There's nothing here warranting a serious discussion. I'm actually surprised Lord Vader hasn't made his rounds yet.
@Gold Mamba lol...hahaha :D
I'm not sure what worse - Motorola releasing a Razr 3 or Engadget thinking the FM radio app on that thing is "cool"
@Chi
Well, it's a good thing neither is true. This phone was never released, and the video isn't produced by Engadget. Notice the source link is from Daily Mobile.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that the FM Radio being cool was a joke.
@Chi
Umm... Both Engadget and the video say it was scrapped and it's not being released, and the dude in that video name drops his own blog at the end of the video, which isn't Engadget. So you're wrong on both counts.
@Chi The worse thing about the fm radio is you need an attacthment. How stupid is that? Why not come up with an app that streams all radio stations in your area to your phone instead of having an attactment? Idk maybe in too young to indesrstand the concept of "let's make crap that needs other crap in order to do a crappy job at what it does" :(
Goodbye Sprint EVO and iPhone 4g, I'm getting a RAZR 3
Add me to that list too
You have a long wait for the iPhone 4G. Remember, Apple released the original iPhone without 3G even though 3G networks were pretty widely available at the time.
4G isn't widely deployed yet, so you won't see an iPhone 4G until at least next year.
@Information Central
Well, it's a good thing he said goodbye to the iPhone 4G, then.
Thanks for the tidbit, it was clearly a joke.
@Information Central
either you're very pedantic or you missed the point that the term iphone 4g is usually used to just refer to 4th gen. nobody expects a 4g network on this summer's release.
@Proverb see, this is what I'm talking about. 90% of posts on Engadget that are about a cell phone other than the iPhone (which makes up 80% of cell phone posts) have NO mention of the iPhone and people still splice in the iPhone out of nowhere. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about others that started talking about iPhone 4G. I mean, you even mentioned the HTC EVO, they completely ignored it! Huh, Apple fanboys..........
I don't think some of the commenters on this website realize that not everybody needs a smartphone. Heck, some people don't even need high end feature phones.
@kevin52094
Heck, I'm not sure that some of the commenters realize this phone is NOT being released. :)
Big whoosh!
Actually, what we don't need is arbitrary terms like "smartphone", which are used mainly to excuse the poor design of a great many phones.
@Information Central You realize what the point of a smartphone is, right? It's that it utilizes data to its fullest extent. How the hell does that mean every dumbphone is poorly designed because it doesn't need data?
"Tech Man" forgetting the third w in his URL does not convince me he deserves his nickname ...
Say you found that at a bar. I dare you.
I can't even begin to care about this thing.